The Flies. The Presbyters of Altona

Two of Sartre's strongest plays and possibly two of the strongest works of French drama in general. Two fierce, ardent cries for freedom – the true freedom that is not lawlessness, but includes a conscious choice of responsibility for one's actions and sometimes, as the hero of one of the plays in the collection proudly acknowledges, begins on the other side of despair. The great king Agamemnon is dead, but one day the young Orestes – the son of the slain – arrives in Mycenae. He returns to take revenge with his sister Electra on the murderers of their father, one of whom is their own mother, Queen Clytemnestra. There is no crime more terrible than matricide... Years have passed since World War II, but in a secluded estate, Franz von Gerlach – a Nazi criminal who managed to escape human judgment, but not the accusations of his own conscience – still languishes, yet himself judging his era...